Conference

I haven’t been able to blog much recently. But at the recent ALA Annual Conference at San Francisco, I presented on the topic of what it takes to implement a makerspace at an academic library. This was to share the work of my library’s Makerspace Task Force that I chaired and the lessons that we learned from the implementation process as well as after we opened the Innovation Space at University of Maryland, Baltimore, Health Sciences and Human Services Library back in April.

I had many great questions and interesting discussion with the audience. If you have any comments and things to share, please write in the comments section below! If you are curious about the makerspace implementation timeline, please see the poster “Preparing for the Makerspace Implemnetation at UMB HS/HSL” below, which my coworker Everly and I presented at the MLA (Medical Library Association) Meeting this spring.

Recently, my library has been considering accepting library fines via online. Currently, many library fines of a small amount that many people owe are hard to collect. As a sum, the amount is significant enough. But each individual fines often do not warrant even the cost for the postage and the staff work that goes into creating and sending out the fine notice letter. Libraries that are able to collect fines through the bursar’s office of their parent institutions may have a better chance at collecting those fines. However, others can only expect patrons to show up with or to mail a check to clear their fines. Offering an online payment option for library fines is one way to make the library service more user-friendly to those patrons who are too busy to visit the library in person or to mail a check but are willing to pay online with their credit cards.

If you are new to the world of online payment, there are several terms you need to become familiar with. The following information from the article in SixRevisions is very useful to understand those terms.1

Merchant Account: A bank account that allows a customer to receive payments through credit or debit cards. Merchant providers are required to obey regulations established by card associations. Many processors act as both the merchant account as well as the payment gateway.

Payment Gateway: The middleman between the merchant and their sponsoring bank. It allows merchants to securely pass credit card information between the customer and the merchant and also between merchant and the payment processor.

Payment Processor: A company that a merchant uses to handle credit card transactions. Payment processors implement anti-fraud measures to ensure that both the front-facing customer and the merchant are protected.

PCI (the Payment Card Industry) Compliance: A merchant or payment gateway must set up their payment environment in a way that meets the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

Often, the same company functions as both payment gateway and payment processor, thereby processing the credit card payment securely. Such a product is called ‘Online payment system.’ Meyer’s article I have cited above also lists 10 popular online payment systems: Stripe, Authorize.Net, PayPal, Google Checkout, Amazon Payments, Dwolla, Braintree, Samurai by FeeFighters, WePay, and 2Checkout. Bear in mind that different payment gateways, merchant accounts, and bank accounts may or may not work together, your bank may or may not work as a merchant account, and your library may or may not have a merchant account. 2

Also note that there are fees in using online payment systems like these and that different systems have different pay structures. For example, Authorize.net has the $99 setup fee and then charges $20 per month plus a $0.10 per-transaction fee. Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction with no setup or monthly fees. Fees for mobile payment solutions with a physical card reader such as Square may go up much higher.

Among various online payment systems, I picked Stripe because it was recommended on the Code4Lib listserv. One of the advantages for using Stripe is that it acts as both the payment gateway and the merchant account. What this means is that your library does not have to have a merchant account to accept payment online. Another big advantage of using Stripe is that you do not have to worry about the PCI compliance part of your website because the Stripe API uses a clever way to send the sensitive credit card information over to the Stripe server while keeping your local server, on which your payment form sits, completely blind to such sensitive data. I will explain this in more detail later in this post.

Below I will share some of the code that I have used to set up Stripe as my library’s online payment option for testing. This may be of interest to you if you are thinking about offering online payment as an option for your patrons or if you are simply interested in how an online payment API works. Even if your library doesn’t need to collect library fines via online, an online payment option can be a handy tool for a small-scale fund-raising drive or donation.

The first step to take to make Stripe work is getting an API keys. You do not have to create an account to get API keys for testing. But if you are going to work on your code more than one day, it’s probably worth getting an account. Stripe API has excellent documentation. I have read ‘Getting Started’ section and then jumped over to the ‘Examples’ section, which can quickly get you off the ground. (https://stripe.com/docs/examples) I found an example by Daniel Schröter in GitHub from the list of examples in the Stripe’s Examples section and decided to test out. (https://github.com/myg0v/Simple-Bootstrap-Stripe-Payment-Form) Most of the time, getting an example code requires some probing and tweaking such as getting all the required library downloaded and sorting out the paths in the code and adding API keys. This one required relatively little work.

Now, let’s take a look at the form that this code creates.

In order to create a form of my own for testing, I decided to change a few things in the code.

Add Patron & Payment Details.

Allow custom amount for payment.

Change the currency from Euro to US dollars.

Configure the validation for new fields.

Hide the payment form once the charge goes through instead of showing the payment form below the payment success message.

4. can be done as follows. The client-side validation is performed by Bootstrapvalidator jQuery Plugin. So you need to get the syntax correct to get the code, which now has new fields, to work properly.

This is the Javascript that allows you to send the data submitted to your payment form to the Stripe server. First, include the Stripe JS library (line 24). Include JQuery, Bootstrap, Bootstrap Form Helpers plugin, and Bootstrap Validator plugin (line 25-28). The next block of code includes an event handler for the form, which send the payment information to the Stripe via AJAX when the form is submitted. Stripe will validate the payment information and then return a token that identifies this particular transaction.

When the token is received, this code calls for the function, stripeResponseHandler(). This function, stripeResponseHandler() checks if the Stripe server did not return any error upon receiving the payment information and, if no error has been returned, attaches the token information to the form and submits the form.

The server-side PHP script then checks if the Stripe token has been received and, if so, creates a charge to send it to Stripe as shown below. I am using PHP here, but Stripe API supports many other languages than PHP such as Ruby and Python. So you have many options. The real payment amount appears here as part of the charge array in line 326. If the charge succeeds, the payment success message is stored in a div to be displayed.

The reason why you do not have to worry about the PCI compliance with Stripe is that Stripe API asks to receive the payment information via AJAX and the input fields of sensitive information does not have the name attribute and value. (See below for the Card Holder Name and Card Number information as an example; Click to bring up the clear version of the image.) By omitting the name attribute and value, the local server where the online form sits is deprived of any means to retrieve the information in those input fields submitted through the form. Since sensitive information does not touch the local server at all, PCI compliance for the local server becomes no concern. To clarify, not all fields in the payment form need to be deprived of the name attribute. Only the sensitive fields that you do not want your web server to have access to need to be protected this way. Here, for example, I am assigning the name attribute and value to fields such as name and e-mail in order to use them later to send a e-mail receipt.

(NB. Please click images to see the enlarged version.)

Now, the modified form has ‘Fee Category’, custom ‘Payment Amount,’ and some other information relevant to the billing purpose of my library.

When the payment succeeds, the page changes to display the following message.

Stripe provides a number of fake card numbers for testing. So you can test various cases of failures. The Stripe website also displays all payments and related tokens and charges that are associated with those payments. This greatly helps troubleshooting. One thing that I noticed while troubleshooting is that Stripe logs sometimes do lag behind. That is, when a payment would succeed, associated token and charge may not appear under the “Logs” section immediately. But you will see the payment shows up in the log. So you will know that associated token and charge will eventually appear in the log later.

Once you are ready to test real payment transactions, you need to flip the switch from TEST to LIVE located on the top left corner. You will also need to replace your API keys for ‘TESTING’ (both secret and public) with those for ‘LIVE’ transaction. One more thing that is needed before making your library getting paid with real money online is setting up SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) for your live online payment page. This is not required for testing but necessary for processing live payment transactions. It is not a very complicated work. So don’t be discouraged at this point. You just have to buy a security certificate and put it in your Web server. Speak to your system administrator for how to get the SSL set up for your payment page. More information about setting up SSL can be found in the Stripe documentation I just linked above.

My library has not yet gone live with this online payment option. Before we do, I may make some more modifications to the code to fit the staff workflow better, which is still being mapped out. I am also planning to place the online payment page behind the university’s Shibboleth authentication in order to cut down spam and save some tedious data entry by library patrons by getting their information such as name, university email, student/faculty/staff ID number directly from the campus directory exposed through Shibboleth and automatically inserting it into the payment form fields.

In this post, I have described my experience of testing out the Stripe API as an online payment solution. As I have mentioned above, however, there are many other online payment systems out there. Depending your library’s environment and financial setup, different solutions may work better than others. To me, not having to worry about the PCI compliance by using Stripe was a big plus. If your library accepts online payment, please share what solution you chose and what factors led you to the particular online payment system in the comments.

I am very excited to be on the Top Technology Trends panel this year. The trend that I will be talking about is Biohackerspace and DIYbio. Never heard of either of them? Check out this TED talk by molecular biologist, Ellen Jorgensen, who is also the founder of GenSpace in Brooklyn.

Won’t be attending the ALA conference this year? There will be live streaming! Follow the Twitter hashtag #ALATTT, and the live stream URL will be posted on the event day by @toptechtrends. The recording will also be made available later. (Big thanks to LITA Top Tech Trends Committee members for making this happen!)

All the trends that will be discussed by this year’s panelists are up on the Top Tech Trends page. This year’s trends include exciting topics such as Open hardware and Personally-tuned discovery system.

Is it really true that being an EL is your ticket to fame and glory within ALA?

Do you think you’re in your place in your career now because of the EL experience? Why and why not?What was the most important/memorable thing you learned from your EL experience?

If you have been one of the ALA Emerging Leaders, come chat with us and other ELs to talk about your experience!

B. Programs that I Will Be Attending

Now that I covered the programs where I will be speaking at, I may as well share some of the programs that I am planning to attend. Please comment if I missed anything great and hopefully this may help others in deciding what program to attend among the wide array of great choices.

Friday June 27

I am arriving at Las Vegas in the morning. If I can still function after the five hour flight and don’t crash at my hotel room, I will be at “Enough PHP to Be Dangerous” program to hang out with librarians who are interested in coding. This is not an official ALA program. But if you are interested in learning how to code, this should be on top of your list along with the LITA/ALCTS Library CodeYear IG Meeting on Saturday!

“Enough PHP to Be Dangerous” is an event organized by Tim Spalding at LibraryThing. It will be 9am-5pm at Embassy Suites Convention Center, three blocks from the Convention Center. To cover the cost of the room and the free lunch, donations will be appreciated ($55 per person). Hope you can support so that more programs like this will continue to take place in the future!

I have never been at a Taiga Forum meeting. So I am planning to check out the program at the Annual this year. The program description says it will cover the way search firms look for academic library AULs & ADs. I am currently in an AD position and so I am hoping that this program will also cover the leadership qualities and experience sought from current and future AULs and ADs.

Even if you are not in a AUL or AD position, if you are interested in learning how decision-makers are selected for an academic library leadership positions, this may be a useful program to you. Or like me if you are just curious about Taiga Forum, that will do as well since the Taiga Forum always produces a controversial position paper.

If you are curious about LITA, make sure to check out LITA Open House program. Then come to the LITA Happy Hour on Sunday. If you work in libraries and work with technologies, LITA is a great place for you to meet like-minded, super-friendly, and knowledgeable people.

I think public and academic libraries need to communicate and learn from each other more. This is the program that was recommended to me by Amy Garmer at Aspen Institute, whom I met at the Future of the Libraries Meeting this spring organized by ALA current president Barbara Stripling. She told me about the recent program she worked on at Aspen Institute, which interviewed many policy makers and various industry business people regarding the future of public libraries. It is likely that I will miss this because I have to go to the Top Tech Trends Committee meeting at the same time. But I think some of you may want to check this out!

ACRL New Members Discussion Group is a vibrant and friendly informal group that can be amazingly useful to new academic librarians and librarians-to-be. I highly recommend this meeting, and this year it has a great topic – the identity of academic librarians – and great speakers. There is a strong chance that if you like this group, you will end up hanging out with a lot of cool people at ACRL. It is at the same time as ACRL President’s Program: Financial Literacy at Your Library though. So you will have to make a wise choice!

Many librarians’ beloved program by sci-fi and fantasy authors organized by LITA Imagineering IG meeting. Come early to get free books! These are usually the only free books I take with me from the ALA conference I attend.

Sunday June 29

I am starting my 3-year term on the LITA board of directors after this year’s ALA Annual Conference. So I will be oriented at this meeting. If you are a LITA member and have any thoughts, ideas, opinions, please let me know or communicate with any other LITA board of directors. BTW, the current board member, Andromeda, wrote an interesting and informative blog post about the LITA budget for the next year. You should check it out if you are a LITA member!

I will be sad missing these other programs taking place at the same time. But maybe some of you would be lucky and can go!

Executive Board Meeting (NMRT) – My term as the NMRT Outreach Director ends at the end of the conference and I will be missing the meeting! But best of luck to the NEW NMRT board members!

ALA President Barbara Stripling at the ALA Summit on the Future of Libraries at the Library of Congress. (Photo by the author)

Yes, that was that controversial Summit that was much talked about on Twitter with the #libfuturesummit hashtag. This Summit and other summits with a similar theme close to one another in timing – “The Future of Libraries Survival Summit” hosted by Information Today Inc. and “The Future of Libraries: Do We Have Five Years to Live?” hosted by Ken Heycock Associates Inc. and Dysart & Jones Associates – seemed to have brought out the sentiment that Andy Woodworth aptly named ‘Library Future Fatigue.’ It was impressive experience to see how active librarians – both ALA members and non-members – were in providing real-time comments and feedback about these summits while I was at one of those in person. I thought ALA is lucky to have such engaged members and librarians to work with.

A few days ago, ALA released the official Summit report.1 The report captured all the talks and many table discussions in great detail. In this post, I will focus on some of my thoughts and take-aways prompted by the talks and the table discussion at the Summit.

A. The Draw

Here is an interesting fact. The invitation to this Summit sat in my Inbox for over a month because from the email subject I thought it was just another advertisement for a fee-based webinar or workshop. It was only after I had gotten another email from the ALA office asking about the previous e-mail that I realized that it was something different.

What drew me to this Summit were: (a) I have never been at a formal event organized just for a discussion about the future of libraries, (b) the event were to include a good number of people outside of the libraries, and (c) the overall size of the Summit would be kept relatively small.

For those curious, the Summit had 51 attendees plus 6 speakers, a dozen discussion table facilitators, all of whom fit into the Members’ Room in the Library of Congress. Out of those 51 attendees, 9 of them were from the non-library sector such as Knight Foundation, PBS, Rosen Publishing, and Aspen Institute. 33 attendees ranged from academic librarians to public, school, federal, corporate librarians, library consultants, museum and archive folks, an LIS professor, and library vendors. And then there were 3 ALA presidents (current, past, and president-elect) and 6 officers from ALA. You can see the list of participants here.

B. Two Words (or Phrases)

At the beginning of the Summit, the participants were asked to come up with two words or short phrases that capture what they think about libraries “from now on.” We wrote these on the ribbons and put right under our name tags. Then we were encouraged to keep or change them as we move through the Summit.

Other phrases and words I saw from other participants included “From infrastructure to engagement,” “Sanctuary for learning,” “Universally accessible,” “Nimble and Flexible,” “From Missionary to Mercenary,” “Ideas into Action,” and “Here, Now.” The official report also lists some of the words that were most used by participants. If you choose your two words or phrases that capture what you think about libraries “from now on,” what would those be?

C. The Set-up

The Summit organizers have filled the room with multiple round tables, and the first day morning, afternoon, and the second day morning, participants sat at the table according to the table number assigned on the back of their name badges. This was a good method that enabled participants to have discussion with different groups of people throughout the Summit.

As the Summit agenda shows, the Summit program started with a talk by a speaker. After that, participants were asked to personally reflect on the talk and then have a table discussion. This discussion was captured on the large poster-size papers by facilitators and collected by the event organizers. The papers on which we were asked to write our personal reflections were also collected in the same way along with all our ribbons on which we wrote those two words or phrases. These were probably used to produce the official Summit report.

One thing I liked about the set-up was that every participant sat at a round table including speakers and all three ALA presidents (past, president, president-elect). Throughout the Summit, I had a chance to talk to Lorcan Dempsey from OCLC, Corinne Hill, the director of Chattanooga Public Library, Courtney Young, the ALA president-elect, and Thomas Frey, a well-known futurist at DaVinci Institute, which was neat.

Also, what struck me most during the Summit was that those who were outside of the library took the guiding questions and the following discussion much more seriously than those of us who are inside the library world. Maybe indeed we librarians are suffering from ‘library future fatigue.’ And/or maybe outsiders have more trust in libraries as institutions than we librarians do because they are less familiar with our daily struggles and challenges in the library operation. Either way, the Summit seemed to have given them an opportunity to seriously consider the future of libraries. The desired impact of this would be more policymakers, thought leaders, and industry leaders who are well informed about today’s libraries and will articulate, support, and promote the significant work libraries do to the benefit of the society in their own areas.

D. Talks, Table Discussion, and Some of My Thoughts and Take-aways

These were the talks given during the two days of the Summit:

“How to Think Like a Freak” – Stephen Dubner, Journalist

“What Are Libraries Good For?” – Joel Garreau, Journalist

“Education in the Future: Anywhere, Anytime” – Dr. Renu Khator, Chancellor and President at the University of Houston

“From an Internet of Things to a Library of Things” – Thomas Frey, Futurist

The most fascinating story in the talk by Dubner was Kobe, the hot dog eating contest champion from Japan. The secret of his success in the eating contest was rethinking the accepted but unchallenged artificial limits and redefining the problem, said Dubner. In Kobe’s case, he redefined the problem from ‘How can I eat more hotdogs?’ to ‘How can I eat one hotdog faster?’ and then removed artificial limits – widely accepted but unchallenged conventions – such as when you eat a hot dog you hold it in the hand and eat it from the top to the bottom. He experimented with breaking the hotdog into two pieces to feed himself faster with two hands. He further refined his technique by eating the frankfurter and the bun separately to make the eating even speedier.

So where can libraries apply this lesson? One thing I can think of is the problem of the low attendance of some library programs. What if we ask what barriers we can remove instead of asking what kind of program will draw more people? Chattanooga Public Library did exactly this. Recently, they targeted the parents who would want to attend the library’s author talk and created an event that would specifically address the child care issue. The library scheduled a evening story time for kids and fun activities for tween and teens at the same time as the author talk. Then they asked parents to come to the library with the children, have their children participate in the library’s children’s programs, and enjoy themselves at the library’s author talk without worrying about the children.

Another library service that I came to learn about at my table was the Zip Books service by the Yolo county library in California. What if libraries ask what the fastest to way to deliver a book that the library doesn’t have to a patron’s door would be instead of asking how quickly the cataloging department can catalog a newly acquired book to get it ready for circulation? The Yolo county library Zip Books service came from that kind of redefinition of a problem. When a library user requests a book the library doesn’t have but meets certain requirements, the Yolo County Library purchases the book from a bookseller and have it shipped directly to the patron’s home without processing the book. Cataloging and processing is done when the book is returned to the library after the first use.

(2) What Can Happen to Higher Education

My favorite talk during the Summit was by Dr. Khator because she had deep insight in higher education and I have been working at university libraries for a long time. The two most interesting observations she made were the possibility of (a) the decoupling of the content development and the content delivery and (b) the decoupling of teaching and credentialing in higher education.

The upside of (a) is that some wonderful class a world-class scholar created may be taught by other instructors at places where the person who originally developed the class is not available. The downside of (a) is, of course, the possibility of it being used as the cookie-cutter type lowest baseline for quality control in higher education – University of Phoenix mentioned as an example of this by one of the participants at my table – instead of college and university students being exposed to the classes developed and taught by their institutions’ own individual faculty members.

I have to admit that (b) was a completely mind-blowing idea to me. Imagine colleges and universities with no credentialing authority. Your degree will no longer be tied to a particular institution to which you were admitted and graduate from. Just consider the impact of what this may entail if it ever becomes realized. If both (a) and (b) take place at the same time, the impact would be even more significant. What kind of role could an academic library play in such a scenario?

(3) Futurizing Libraries

Joe Garreau observed that nowadays what drives the need for a physical trip is more and more a face-to-face contact than anything else. Then he pointed out that as technology allows more people to tele-work, people are flocking to smaller cities where they can have a more meaningful contact with the community. If this is indeed the case, libraries that make their space a catalyst for a face-to-face contact in a community will prosper. Last speaker, Thomas Frey, spoke mostly about the Internet of Things (IoT).

While I think that IoT is an important trend to note, for sure, what I most liked about Frey’s talk was his statement that the vision of future we have today will change the decisions we make (towards that future). After the talk by Garreau, I had a chance to ask him a question about his somewhat idealized vision of the future, in which people live and work in a small but closely connected community in a society that is highly technological and collaborative. He called this ‘human evolution’.

But in my opinion, the reality that we see today in my opinion is not so idyllic.3 The current economy is highly volatile. It no longer offers job security, consistently reduces the number of jobs, and returns either stagnant or decreasing amount of income for those whose skills are not in high demand in the era of digital revolution.4 As a result, today’s college students, who are preparing to become tomorrow’s knowledge workers, are perceiving their education and their lives after quite differently than their parents did.5

Garreau’s answer to my question was that this concern of mine may be coming from a kind of techno-determinism. While this may be a fair critique, I felt that his portrayal of the human evolution may be just as techno-deterministic. (To be fair, he mentioned that he does not make predictions and this is one of the future scenarios he sees.)

Regarding the topic of the Internet of Things (IoT), which was the main topic of Frey’s talk, the privacy and the proper protection of the massive amount of data – which will result from the very many sensors that makes IoT possible – will be the real barrier to implementing the IoT on a large scale. After his talk, I had a chance to briefly chat with him about this. (There was no Q&A because Frey’s talk went over the time allotted). He mentioned the possibility of some kind of an international gathering similar to the scale of the Geneva Conventions to address the issue. While the likelihood of that is hard to assess, the idea seemed appropriate to the problem in question.

(4) What If…?

One of the slides from Thomas Frey’s Talk at the ALA Summit. (Photo by the author)

Some of the shiny things shown at the talk, whose value for library users may appear dubious and distant, however, prompted Eli Neiburger at Ann Arbor District Library to question which useful service libraries can offer to provide the public with significant benefit now. He wondered what it would be like if many libraries ran a Tor exit node to help the privacy and anonymity of the web traffic, for example.

Just pause a minute and imagine what kind of impact such a project by libraries may have to the privacy of the public. What if?

(5) Leadership and Sustainability

For the “Table Discussion of Choice” session, I opted for the “Open” table because I was curious in what other topics people were interested. Two discussions at this session were most memorable to me. One was the great advice I got from Corinne Hill regarding leading people. A while ago, I read her interview, in which she commented that “the staff are just getting comfortable with making decisions.” In my role as a relatively new manager, I also found empowering my team members to be more autonomous decision makers a challenge. Corinne particularly cautioned that leaders should be very careful about not being over-critical when the staff takes an initiative but makes a bad decision. Being over-critical in that case can discourage the staff from trying to make their own decisions in their expertise areas, she said. Hearing her description of how she relies on the different types of strengths in her staff to move her library in the direction of innovation was also illuminating to me. (Lorcan Dempsey who was also at our table mentioned “Birkman Quadrants” in relation to Corinne’s description, a set of useful theoretical constructs. He also brought up the term ‘Normcore’ at another session. I forgot the exact context of that term, but the term was interesting that I wrote it down.) We also talked for a while about the current LIS education and how it is not sufficiently aligned with the skills needed in everyday library operation.

The other interesting discussion started with the question about the sustainability of the future libraries by Amy Garmer from Aspen Institute. (She has been working on a library-related project with various policy makers, and PLA has a program related to this project at the upcoming 2014 ALA Annual Conference if you are interested.) One thought that always comes to my mind whenever I think about the future of libraries is that while in the past the difference between small and large libraries was mostly quantitative in terms of how many books and other resources were available, in the present and future, the difference is and will be more qualitative. What New York Public Libraries offers for their patrons, a whole suite of digital library products from the NYPL Labs for example, cannot be easily replicated by a small rural library. Needless to say, this has a significant implication for the core mission of the library, which is equalizing the public’s access to information and knowledge. What can we do to close that gap? Or perhaps will different types of libraries have different strategies for the future, as Lorcan Dempsey asked at our table discussion? These two things are not incompatible to be worked out at the same time.

(6) Nimble and Media-Savvy

In her Summit summary, Joanne Frye Williams, who moved around to observe discussions at all tables during the Summit, mentioned that one of the themes that surfaced was thinking about a library as a developing enterprise rather than a stable organization. This means that the modus operandi of a library should become more nimble and flexible to keep the library in the same pace of the change that its community goes through.

Another thread of discussion among the Summit participants was that not all library supporters have to be the active users of the library services. As long as those supporters know that the presence and the service of libraries makes their communities strong, libraries are in a good place. Often libraries make the mistake of trying to reach all of their potential patrons to convert them into active library users. While this is admirable, it is not always practical or beneficial to the library operation. More needed and useful is a well-managed strategic media relations that will effectively publicize the library’s services and programs and its benefits and impact to its community. (On a related note, one journalist who was at the Summit mentioned how she noticed the recent coverage about libraries changing its direction from “Are libraries going to be extinct?” to “No, libraries are not going to be extinct. And do you know libraries offer way more than books such as … ?”, which is fantastic.)

E. What Now? Library Futurizing vs. Library Grounding

What all the discussion at the Summit reminded me was that ultimately the time and efforts we spend on trying to foresee what the future holds for us and on raising concerns about the future may be better directed at refining the positive vision for the desirable future for libraries and taking well-calculated and decisive actions towards the realization of that vision.

Technology is just a tool. It can be used to free people to engage in more meaningful work and creative pursuits. Or it can be used to generate a large number of the unemployed, who have to struggle to make the ends meet and to retool themselves with fast-changing skills that the labor market demands, along with those in the top 1 or 0.1 % of very rich people. And we have the power to influence and determine which path we should and would be on by what we do now.

Certainly, there are trends that we need to heed. For example, the shift of the economy that places a bigger role on entrepreneurship than ever before requires more education and support for entrepreneurship for students at universities and colleges. The growing tendency of the businesses looking for potential employees based upon their specific skill sets rather than their majors and grades has lead universities and colleges to adopt a digital badging system (such as Purdue’s Passport) or other ways for their students to record and prove the job-related skills obtained during their study.

But when we talk about the future, many of us tend to assume that there are some kind of inevitable trends that we either get or miss and that those trends will determine what our future will be. We forget that not some trends but (i) what we intend to achieve in the future and (ii) today’s actions we take to realize that intention are really what determines our future. (Also always critically reflect on whatever is trendy; you may be in for a surprise.7) The fact that people will no longer need to physically visit a library to check out books or access library resources does not automatically mean that the library in the future will cease to have a building. The question is whether we will let that be the case. Suppose we decide that we want the library to be and stay as the vibrant hub for a community’s freedom of inquiry and right to access human knowledge, no matter how much change takes place in the society. Realizing this vision ‘IS’ within our power. We only reach the future by walking through the present.

For a short but well-written clear description of this phenomenon, see Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Andrew McAfee. Race against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy. Lexington: Digital Frontier Press, 2012. ↩

Here are the presentations and talks I gave at the ALA conference 2012. This year’s ALA conference was a challenge because I was swamped with work until the last minute I left work for the conference. So I wasn’t able to write any blog post before the conference. And of course, I spent more time on polishing the slides once I got to Anaheim. Although I was not fully prepared both physically and mentally, however, the ALA Annual Conference was, as always, invigorating and informative. I am still digesting much of what I have learned from the conference and hopefully I can summarize some of those things later to share.

In the meantime, here are the slides of the talks and presentations that I gave at the conference. Big thanks to my co-presenters, Jason Clark and Tod Colegrove. It was one of the most amazing collaboration experience I ever had. Also special thanks to the LITA Heads of Library Technology Interest Group for inviting me to serve on the panel discussing the adoption of open source software at libraries. And as always, I greatly enjoyed the lively discussion at the LITA Mobile Computing Interest Group meeting.

ALA is now receiving applications for the 2012 class of the Emerging Leaders (EL) Program, and I saw many new librarians considering applying to the program in Twitter, Facebook, etc. Applying for this program requires some paperwork. You have to write an essay and get references sent. You also have to commit yourself to attending two conferences in person.

So the question is whether the program would be worth all these. As a member of the 2011 class, I have some thoughts about the program from which I just graduated. Hopefully this post will help you decide whether the program is a right fit for you or not.

What the EL program is really about

The first thing to know about the EL program before applying is that its purpose is to develop leaders “in ALA” not just anywhere. Of course, what you get to learn from the program about leadership will be useful in other organizations. But my experience is that this program is definitely focused on helping new librarians to get familiar with the organizational structure of ALA and to get involved in ALA divisions, roundtables, or even the ALA Council. It is not a program about leadership in general.

So if possible, attend the ALA conference a few times before applying for this program. See if you are interested in becoming active in ALA. The EL program itself won’t necessarily help you determine whether you would like being involved in ALA and which ALA division is right for you. You should know answers to these questions first. If they are YES, then apply for the program.

Remember that the EL program is not the only way to become involved and active in ALA. Often it is easy enough to find the right place to meet librarian peers in the field of yours if you stumble into a right Interest Group, Discussion Group, or Section. You can volunteer to be a chair, organize or present a program, and form a great personal network of mentors, colleagues, and friends without ever stepping your foot into the EL program.

This also means that these are things that ‘you’ still have to do whether you get into the EL program or not. The EL program may open some doors for you, but you will be the one who has to take the opportunity and make it work for you if you decide to be active in ALA.

What you get to do if selected as an EL

You get to choose a project you want to work on. If you get to be sponsored by any unit, division, section, or other library organization, you will be asked to work on a project from that group. Otherwise, you are free to choose the project that interests most.

You will meet your team members and the mentor(s) at the Midwinter and plan how you will spend the time from the Midwinter to the Annual conference to get the project done.

When the project is completed, you will give a poster session with other EL project teams.

How do I get sponsored?

The EL program requires you to attend two conferences in person. But you can be sponsored. To believe or not, there are many units, divisions, sections, and regional library associations that sponsor an EL candidate that meet their criteria.

This is one of the reasons why it is good to apply for the EL program after having some exposure and experience with ALA rather than being completely new to it. If you are a member of any group that sponsors an EL candidate, make sure to indicate that in the application. If there is a unit that you want to be active in, and that unit sponsors the EL program, it might be a good idea to be active in the unit first, to get to know better about what you can contribute to and what you can learn from, and then apply to the EL program expecting the sponsorship from that unit.

It is an investment for any organization to sponsor an EL program participant. So it is fair for the organization to expect you to contribute back to the organization. So think about what you want to do professionally and how it may align with what you can give it back. Try to make it a win-win situation for both you and the sponsoring organization.

The benefits of the EL program

People will have different opinions on this depending on their personal experience of the program. But for me, the best thing about the EL program was the opportunity to meet and work with peers who are extremely intelligent, talented, driven, and ambitious. It is also an opportunity to get to know and work with colleagues in a completely different library setting and area of specialization than yours. Because of this, you will get valuable experience no matter what project you get to work on and even if the project was not of your first choice.

I want to point out that working in an EL project team is likely to be very different from working in any other project team at your workplace. You will be surrounded with high achievers, and it is likely that you won’t have a slacking and/or unreliable team member problem. Instead, you may get the experience of your brilliant idea (in your opinion) being brutally rejected for a good reason. You may spend hours on a heated discussion without coming to any conclusion. You and your team may have to invent the project itself because the project idea is vague at best. You may learn where and at which point to make the best contribution and when not to be in the way. You might have been a leader in one way or another in all your life but soon find out that you now get the invaluable opportunity to play the role of a good follower in the group (which is just as important as the role of a leader).

So I think that the great benefit of the EL program (for me) was to work in the EL project team I was assigned to. The actual work with my team taught me more than any book, article, talk, and discussion about leading and being led effectively, harmoniously, and gracefully. (I have to warn you though that these lessons would be probably coming after you finish the project not while working on the project.)

No drawbacks?

No program lacks some drawbacks or disappointments. The ALA Emerging Leaders program has some too of course. In case you get selected, I will tell you a few that I noticed. (But bear in mind that this can be relative to my experience.)

You won’t be changing the world or ALA by the one project you get to work on.

The fact that you get to work on an EL project doesn’t give you the secret weapon to melt all the bureaucracy in ALA.

You may request but not hear what came out of your team’s project work as a result after a few years.
(I hope this gets changed.)

You might feel still somewhat lost in ALA. (But now you are lost with some friends.)

You may even decide that ALA wasn’t for you. (But hey, now you know!)

You will now have a new question to ponder – “Have I now emerged?”

I hope this post is useful to some of you and wish the best of luck to all EL applicants!

My EL Team (M) Poster with Dre and Lauren (Pearl and Emily not present in the photo) at the 2011 ALA Annual Conference.

To believe it or not, I haven’t still finalized my ALA schedule. The ALA Annual Conference is so big and offers so many different programs, presentations, and discussion meetings that it is hard to pick in advance exactly what schedule one will follow. Below is a list of programs that I am likely to attend plus a few programs in which I am participating.

Am I missing any great program? (It is very likely.) If so, please let me know!

June 24, Friday

9 am -3 pm Emerging Leaders Training

3 pm – 4 pm Emerging Leaders Poster Sessionhttp://connect.ala.org/node/138674
: I am doing a poster session with my colleagues in Team M of the 2011 class of Emerging Leaders. The project we have worked on for a year is “Branding LITA: A Market Identity for the 21st Century” Come check out what ideas our team came up with. If you are active and/or interested in LITA, you may drop by and throw us some ideas! More information on the project: http://connect.ala.org/node/146019

10 pm – Midnight ALA Dance Partyhttp://connect.ala.org/node/140642: I am planning to go only if I find some company who will focus more on drinking than dancing. So hopefully there would be non-dancing but dance-watching librarians…

June 25, Saturday

8 am – 12 pm LITA Board of Directors Meeting
: Of course, I am not on LITA board of directors. I am going with my Team M of the 2011 class of Emerging Leaders to present our project outcome to the LITA board of directors. They will eventually decide what ideas and suggestions in our proposal LITA will adopt and implement for LITA branding and marketing in the future. We are going to be there probably not for an entire duration of the meeting.

So some other things I can run to when I am out of the board meeting are:

10:30 am – 12 pm LITA IG Chairs Meeting
: I am hoping to get some ideas about how to make an IG meeting more active and open to virtual participation at this meeting. I am chairing Mobile Computing IG and have been experimenting with an IG meeting as a venue for short presentation and informal discussion that is not restricted by the strict ALA program proposal deadline which usually requires submitting a topic almost a year in advance. Maybe there are more ways to make an IG meeting fun and useful. We will see. I am also kind of hoping to catch up with what some of other LITA IGs are doing. Because of time conflict, I rarely can attend more than a few LITA IG meetings.

But I may not survive too many business meetings. So I may go to:

10:30 am – 12 pm ACRL President’s program “President’s Program: From Idea to Innovation to Implementation: How Teams Make it Happen (ACRL)”

1:30 pm – 3:30 pm ACRL New Members Discussion Grouphttp://connect.ala.org/node/137451: This is an excellent place for library school students or new librarians. It’s a small group discussion and the atmosphere is very informal. You can ask any dumb questions about ALA, ACRL, academic libraries, job market, and any and everything else that budding and new librarians care about. This year, ACRL New Members Discussion Group has a panel discussion program “Learn about Tenure: what does faculty or non-faculty status mean for new librarians?”http://connect.ala.org/node/144880

4 pm – 5:30 pm Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Information Science: I find it fascinating how the interests of library and information science seems to overlap somehow with the imagination of sci-fi. And of course, it helps that I read certain sci-fi authors or series quite avidly such as Olson Scott Card’s Ender series.

I will be writing a short blog post for American Libraries after attending this session.

7 pm – 9 pm Newbie & Veteran Librarian Tweet-Uphttp://connect.ala.org/node/140971: It’s a party time! Come to the Newbie & Veteran Librarian Tweet-up. It’s one of my most favorite social activities at ALA. If you are new and knows no one, this is a place to start! No invitation, no RSVP required though appreciated (http://twtvite.com/ala11twtup). Just come and join the library crowd. Everyone fits right in. :- )

8 am – 10 am Lost in Translation: the Emerging Technology Librarian & the New Technologyhttp://connect.ala.org/node/137555
: I will be serving as a panelist on this panel discussion program. This program was planned as an extension to the last year’s ALA program that I have moderated “What is Your Library Doing about Emerging Technologies?” We will talk about four common problems and issues that libraries often encounter in adopting and implementing emerging technology projects, solicit opinions and thoughts from attendees, and come up with solutions and helpful ideas together through open discussion between the panel and attendees.

10:30 am – Noon LITA Mobile Computing Interest Group Meetinghttp://connect.ala.org/node/137605
: I am chairing LITA Mobile Computing Interest Group and very excited about this meeting. Four wonderful presentations are lined up as well as interesting discussion topics. This is not an official ALA program but you can see the presentations and discussion ideas here: http://connect.ala.org/node/142438. If you are interested in mobile computing, you must check this out.

﻿Tomorrow, I will be giving a webcast for ACRL 2011 Virtual Conference with Kiyomi Deards and Erin Dorney. The webcast is open to all attendees of either ACRL 2011 Conference or ACRL 2011 Virtual Conference. I have moderated a panel discussion program at ALA 2011 Midwinter on the same topic. But in tomorrow’s webcast, we will discuss more in depth about the right fit between one’s own personality / preferences and personal branding tools and practical tips to develop and manage one’s own personal brand. We will also have a lot of time dedicated for questions from the webcast attendees.

What the message of personal branding boils down to is: Be engaged in the profession, share your thoughts and ideas with peers, and contribute to the ongoing dialogue of librarianship. The new twist is that now with the rise of many social media tools, this can be done much faster and more effectively than before and even on the cheap (without even attending a conference physically).

Here are the slides for the webcast. If you are attending ACRL 2011 conference, join us. Otherwise, share your thoughts!

Here is the slides for the presentation I am doing with my colleague, Marissa, at Computers in Libraries 2011 conference this coming Wednesday. I cover the first half in which we look at the common usability flaws in library websites and discuss cheap and quick fixes. I may tinker a bit more since the presentation is still a few days away. But the slides are done.

Do you plan to do or have you done any library website usability improvement project? Share your thoughts and experience or plan!

How fantastic would it be if every small library has an in-house developer? We will be all using open-source software with custom feature modules that would perfectly fit our vision and the needs of the community we serve. Libraries will then truly be the smart consumers of technology not at the mercy of clunky systems. Furthermore, it would re-position libraries as “contributors” to the technology that enables the public to access information and knowledge resources. I am sure no librarian will object to this vision. But at this time of ever-shrinking library budget, affording enough librarians itself is a challenge let alone hiring a developer.

But why should this be the case? Librarians are probably one of the most tech-savvy professionals after IT and science/ engineering/ marketing folks. So why aren’t there more librarians who code? Why don’t we see a surge of librarian coders? After all, we are living in times in which the web is the platform for almost all human activities and libraries are changing its name to something like learning and ‘technology’ center.

I don’t think that coding is too complicated or too much to learn for any librarian regardless of their background. Today’s libraries offer such a wide range of resources and services online and deploy and rely on so many systems from an ILS to a digital asset management system that libraries can benefit a great deal from those staff who have even a little bit of understanding in coding.

The problem is, I think, libraries do not proactively encourage nor strongly support their in-house library staff to become coders. I am not saying that all librarians / library staff should learn how to code like a wizard. But it is an undeniable fact that there are enough people in the library land who are seriously interested in coding and capable of becoming a coder. But chances are, these people will have no support from their own libraries. If they are working in non-technology-related areas, it will be completely up to them to pursue and pay for any type of learning opportunities. Until they prove themselves to be capable of a certain level of coding, they may not even be able to get hands-on experience of working in library technologies/systems/programming. And when they become capable, they may have to seek a new job if they are serious about putting to use their newly acquired programming skills.

It is puzzling to me why libraries neglect to make conscious efforts in supporting their staff who are interested in coding to further develop their skills while freely admitting that they would benefit from having a programmer on staff. Perhaps it is the libraries that are making the wrong distinction between library work and technology work.They are so much more closely intertwined than, say, a decade ago. Even library schools that are slow to change are responding and adding technology courses to their curriculum and teaching all LIS students basic HTML. But certainly libraries can use staff who want to move beyond HTML.

At the 2011 ALA Midwinter, I attended LITA Head of Library Technology Interest Group meeting. One of the issues discussed there was how to recruit and maintain the IT workforce within libraries. Some commented the challenge of recruting people from the IT industry, which often pays more than libraries do. Some mentioned how to quickly acclimate those new to libraries to the library culture and technology. Others discussed the difficulty of retaining IT professionals in libraries since libraries tend to promote only librarians with MLS degrees and tend to exclude non-librarians from the important decision-making process. Other culture differences between IT and libraries were also discussed.

These are all valid concerns and relevant discussion topics. But I was amazed by the fact that almost all assumed that the library IT people would come from the IT sector and outside from libraries. Some even remarked that they prefered to hire from the IT industry outside libraries when they fill a position.This discussion was not limited to programmers but inclusive of all IT professionals. Still, I think perhaps there is something wrong if libraries only plan to steal IT people from the outside without making any attempt to invest in growing some of those technology people inside themselves. IT professionals who come from the general IT industry may be great coders but they do not know about libraries. This is exactly the same kind of cause for inflexible library systems created by programmers who do not know enough about the library’s businesses and workflows.

So why don’t libraries work to change that?

One of the topics frequently discussed in librareis these days is open source software. At the recent 2011 Code4Lib conference, there was a breakout session about what kind of help would allow libraries to more actively adopt open source software adn systems. Those who have experience in working with open source software at the session unanimously agreed that adopting open-source is not cheap. There is a misconception that by adopting open source software, libraries will save money. But if so, at least that would not be the case in any short tem. Open-source requires growing knowledgeable technology staff in-house who would understand the software fully and able to take advantage of its flexibility to benefit the organization’s goals. It is not something you can buy cheap off the shelf and make it work by turning a key. While adopting open-source will provide freedom to libraries to experiment and improve their services and thereby empower lirbaries, those benefits will not come for free without investment.

Some may ask why not simply hire services from a third-party company that will support the open-source software or system that a library will adopt. But without the capability of understanding the source and of making changes as needed, how would libraries harness the real power of open-source unless the goal is just a friendier vendor-library relationship?

In his closing talk at the 2011 Code4Lib conference, Eric Hellman pointed out the fact that many library programmers are self-taught and often ‘fractional’ coders in the sense that they can afford to spend only a fraction of their time on coding. The fact that most library coders are fractional coders is all the more reason for having more coders in libraries, so that more time can be spent collectively on coding for libraries. Although enthusiastic, many novice coders are often lost about how certain programming languages or software tools are or can be applied to current library services and systems and need guidance about which coding skills are most relevant and can be used to produce immediately useful results in the library context. Many novice coders at librareis who often teach themselves programming skills by attending (community) college courses at night at their own expenses and scouring the web for resources and tutorials after work can certainly benefit from some support from their libraries.

Are you a novice or experienced coder working at libraries? Were/are you encouraged to further develop your skills? If a novice, what kind of support would you like to see from your libraries? If experienced, how did you get there? I am all ears. Please share your thoughts.

——————————

N.B. If you are a formally trained CS/E person, you may want to know that I am using the term ‘coding’ loosely in the library context, not in the context of software industry. Please see this really helpful post“after @bohyunkim: talking across boundaries and the meaning of ‘coder'” by Andromeda Yelton which clarifies this. Will K’s two comments below also address the usage of this term in its intended sense much better than I did. I tried to clarify a bit more what I meant below in my comments but feel free to comment/suggest a better term if you find this still problematic. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! (2/22/2011)